Adrift
by publicbus
Summary: from dr. spencer reid's POV. men and women are being abducted and murdered in portland, ME - will the BAU be able to stop the UnSub before his next victim?
1. part I: mercilessly

**author's note: **i do not own any of the _criminal minds _concepts, characters, or storylines. all rights belong to CBS. i make no profit from this work whatsoever. this is a work informed by the US copyright fair use. rated MA for mature - content warning for murder and violent images.

* * *

**part I: mercilessly  
**

* * *

_"The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both. " -James A. Michener_

* * *

the sunlight was filtering through the window, gently touching each piece of the room: long fingers of light across the metal radiator, the squeaky floorboards, the bookshelves bowing under the weight stacked at their centers, the unmade bed, white sheets pulling up off the corners of the blue mattress. spencer reid laid at the center of the mattress, asleep, sleeping in on a rare saturday off from work (so far). evil doesn't rest for weekends, but spencer was. finally. he had slept for almost a full eight hours, for once. it was 8:22 am.

there were only three more minutes before evil rang.

8:23, 8:24, 8:25. the clock ticked around. next to his bed, on wooden nightstand with used tissues scattered across the top, the cell phone started to buzz, shifting back and forth. the flat screen of the phone said: HOTCH.

spencer, his wavy hair standing nearly on end, reached out a hand and scraped the phone from his nightstand. he saw the name. he answered.

"reid," he said.

"reid, we have a case," the voice, spencer's boss, hotch, said.

"what are the specifics?" reid said, sitting up in bed, wiping at his eyes. he wished he was still sleeping, but felt the duty of his job calling to him. he was proud to be an FBI agent, but he also wasn't quite awake yet.

"portland, maine," hotch said. "a series of abductions. two bodies already found in the bay, possibly - probably - more."

"okay," spencer said.

"can you be here in 30? wheels up in 60," hotch said.

"it's a little tight, but i'll make it."

"okay. see you then." hotch hung up the phone, and spencer stood - he thought of himself as _spencer _mostly while at home, when he conducted internal conversations with himself, within his thoughts. it wasn't until he put on his dress shirt and tie, hooked his badge to a pocket, and holstered up his piece that he felt like he was _reid, _or _dr. reid_, the way his coworkers referred to him. to be honest, he preferred to leave off the _doctor _piece because he didn't feel like his academic work was something that should be used for status. but, still: the two halves - spencer and reid, each the same person and not the same person at all.

* * *

29 minutes later, reid was dressed, clutching a mug of coffee, and sitting around the table he and his 8 coworkers often sat around at Quantico. his go bag sat at his feet, a tan messenger bag holding a few outfits, another pair of shoes, toiletries, three books. other people brought small rolling suitcases - reid preferred to carry everything in his usual daytime traveling bag, which he had purposely purchased to be large enough for both needs. he was also remarkably good at looking and seeming completely awake before he actually was completely awake. he suspected that was true of most of his coworkers.

the table was a large, round, plastic-topped table, sometimes smeared with bits of food and coffee rings. spencer often cleaned off the food bits and took a paper towel to the coffee rings - he wanted the table to look as professional as a large round plastic table could. near the front of the room, hotch - aaron hotcher, his boss - stood, pointing to pictures projected onto a screen. penelope garcia, the Behavioral Analysis Unit's technology queen, had set up a quick slideshow, since they were leaving on the jet shortly.

"this is gillian barre," he said, hand lilting near a photo of a dead woman, her eyes grey and glazed over by white, body pulled from the casco bay in portland. her head looked like it was resting on a dock or wooden structure of some kind. "31, paralegal at a local small law firm. she was last seen alive on april 10. her body was found yesterday, three days later, in the bay. it appears that she was manually strangled." there were photos of gillian's body floating flacedown in the jean-blue hues of the bay, and a photo of her when she had been alive, some sort of professional headshot. she had been beautiful, reid noticed - clear skin, curly brown hair, a mischievous edge to her grin.

"this," hotch gestured to another photo, "is william coldman. 48, construction worker." again, his head looked as though it were being photographed on top of a dock. in life, william coldman was also an attractive man - silvering hair at his temples, thin wire-frame glasses, and sharp facial features that played against the kindness in his eyes. reid often noticed the contradictions in others like these. "he was also found strangled in casco bay. manual strangulation. disappeared april 12, found in the bay this morning. locally, there are usually less than 3-5 homicides in a year, so it is highly unusual for portland to have two in one week."

"so our unsub doesn't have a gender or age preference _and _he's speeding up," morgan, agent derek morgan, one of reid's coworkers, offered.

"wait - how do we know these are victims of the _same _unsub?" reid asked.

"like i said, it is highly unusual for portland to have more than once homicide in a week, _and _both victims had pieces of paper in ziploc bags with one-word messages shoved into their throats post-mortem," hotch said. he gestured at a final series of photos projected onto the screen.

"calling card," reid murmured.

jj, agent jennifer jareau, another of reid's coworkers, asked, "what did the messages say?"

"the message in gillian's throat said 'the.' the message in william's throat said 'master,'" hotch said.

"do you think our unsub is spelling out a message using the victims?" jj asked.

"i think it's possible," hotch said. "very possible. 'the master' sounds like it could be the beginning of some sort of sentence to me. and now, the reason we're going to portland - a third possible victim has disappeared. hannah samuels, 22, student, was abducted by force between 6:45 and 7am this morning while jogging in portland's western promenade area."

"our unsub apparently had a busy morning," morgan said.

"did anyone see the abduction?" blake, agent alex blake, asked.

"yes," hotch said. "a couple walking their dog near where hannah was abducted saw and heard her being forced into a light-colored four-door sedan. she was screaming bloody murder."

* * *

somewhere near portland, in a dark dungeon-like basement, hannah samuels was trapped. the air around her was heavy with mildew and darkness.

she was dirty and exhausted, her dark hair strewn with bits of dirt and grass from her struggle earlier in the morning - at least she thought it had been that morning - with the terrible man who had taken her away from her life. blood caked on her temples and forehead from the blow the terrible man had issued to her head as she struggled. her head was aching, pounding, wouldn't let up.

as hannah roused more, she felt a heavy weight on her wrists and ankles and realized she was chained to a bed without sheets. she didn't know how long she had been out, she didn't know where she was - all she knew was that she was alone for now, waiting for the next horrible thing to happen to her. perhaps death. she wasn't foolish - she knew people had been being abducted in the last seven days and turning up dead in casco bay a few days later. she hoped that wasn't next on the list, but something told her she was next.

she wasn't ready for death yet.

she was only 22. she was studying biochemistry at one of the local universities, southern maine college of sciences. she had a boyfriend named ben that she loved and wanted to marry. they'd been together for two years and she still loved holding his hand and all the simple small gestures of a relationship that they shared.

she wasn't ready for death yet and she hoped a time wouldn't come where death was a welcome reprieve.

* * *

"our unsub is getting bolder," jj, now on their all-purpose jet, said to the team. "the other abductions, william and gillian, weren't witnessed, correct?"

"gillian was taken from her house in the middle of the night, no sign of forced entry, but definitely signs of a struggle inside the house," reid said, looking down at the case file, at pictures of gillian's black-and-white dining room chairs keeled over.

"william disappeared from the construction site he was working on sometime after most of his coworkers had gone home. again, there were signs of a struggle near his car. disturbances in the dirt, blood smeared across the side of his car. there were tire tracks found near the scene of the struggle," reid added.

"the one thing that gets me," jj said, "is how often no one sees our victims getting taken. how do you miss a struggle like that? one that leaves blood smeared across the entire side of a car? it was 7pm. it wasn't even dark yet."

"perhaps the unsub was known to both victims, with the lack of forced entry and the unsub approaching william on the job site," morgan said.

"but that doesn't explain hannah's abduction. it was very public, at least for 7'o'clock in the morning. we'll need to interview the couple that saw the struggle," hotch said.

hotch began giving out assignments. "morgan, i want you and blake on victimology when we land. visit the abduction sites and/or the victims' homes. reid and jj, i want you to interview the couple that saw hannah samuels' abduction. they might be able to provide crucial details that will lead us to the unsub. reid, if you could, also do some geographic study of portland and the surrounding areas too. rossi and i will take the ME's office and local police precinct and catch their take on what's happening."

hotch was a good leader, reid thought. he played to the strengths of his team, and he also varied the assignments enough so that everyone's specific skills were being used on different cases. the jet was due to land in portland in 15 to 20 minutes, and as a silence fell over the team, reid thought back to this morning, laying in his bed before the call. he wished he was still there. he wished that terrible things didn't happen to people all the time. he wished he could sleep without seeing gillian barre's eyes glazed over, dead on a dock, alone, completely alone.

shortly, they landed at the portland international jetport. reid thought it was ironic that it was called an "international jetport" because it was one of the smaller airports he had been to. he didn't mean it insultingly - he just thought it was ironic that that the airport billed itself as a bustling international jetport. and it was bustling, in a way - there were handfuls of people scattered about the airport waiting for boarding as they exited the jet. small families, little children, businessmen sitting alone in the uncomfortable-looking chairs. there were a series of white rocking chairs in the boarding area that reminded reid of wrap-around porches and ocean stretched out as far as the eye could see.

realistically, he knew, from statistics of maine's population, portland was the largest city in the state with a population of 66,000 in the metro area and, as of 2010, 514,000 in the greater portland area and its surrounding towns. he thought perhaps as they landed that portland, like other cities in primarily rural states, would have a Really Big Town sort of feel to it. the airport seemed to confirm that. the bulk of the state's population was in the southern part, and though the airport serviced every major airline, it still felt like a small airport. reid didn't mind - he liked to get up close and personal with the population and land of every place they visited, get to know the lay of the land intimately, personally, connect with the people and the places as if he lived there. that _was _one cool part of the job - traveling all over and learning about new places. it was maybe the only part that didn't come imbued with heaviness, heaviness in reid's heart, as he thought about all the terrible things people did to each other.

* * *

not long later, reid and jj were in a black FBI SUV driving to the downtown precinct on middle street. morgan and blake were off to the victims' homes and abduction sites, rossi and hotch to the medical examiner's office. reid hated driving, felt too distracted by the thoughts that occupied his brain 100% of the time, to drive, so jj was behind the wheel.

"this is a quaint little city," jj commented on the drive over.

"yeah, it is," reid said. "i actually really like all the cobblestone. it reminds me that portland was part of the original settlements in puritan america. portland was originally settled in 1633. did you know it was a site of major rebellion during the prohibition era, too? the mayor hid a bunch of moonshine in the basement of city hall until revolutionaries blew it up."

"i don't know how your brain remembers facts like that," jj said. "like, you even know the specific year portland was settled. how?"

"i...read a lot, i guess?" reid said, looking out the window. he felt a little embarrassed at times by how much he talked, how much information he spouted off, how often his coworkers had to remind him to stay on track. he just loved information and facts so much. he wanted to know everything about the world. and facts were facts, you couldn't argue with them - and they rarely ever hurt anyone the way the people did. plus, facts were easy to keep control of, unlike the rest of reid's life. he was often lonely at home and grateful that his job took him away from having to spend all that time facing himself. spencer and reid, he thought again: two halves of the whole. at work, he was cool, confident, connected, if a little verbose; at home, he felt adrift in a sea of books, and only books. he didn't feel confident or cool. he felt like the nerd he had been in high school, the one that the bullies - including the girl he had a crush on - had picked on mercilessly.

by now, they were at the police precinct.

they parked the car and went inside. they were greeted by a glassed-in window with a receptionist behind it. they approached the window, and jj said, "hello, we're here from the bureau. agents jareau and reid. officer candless should be expecting us." the way she said it was so commanding, yet still kind. he appreciated that about jj, and about all his coworkers - getting to see confident, commanding sides of them, and vulnerable sides, he imagined not everyone in their lives saw.

the woman behind the window said, "let me call her for you." she was a bit abrupt, reid noticed, but again, not unkind.

a few moments later the agents were behind the glass, meeting officer jenna candless for the first time. she was a little under 6', blonde, with her hair pulled back in a bun. she was clearly a confident woman. reid enjoyed being surrounded by confident women, as he felt that women should not have bullshit imposed on them by society that made them shrink away from embodying confidence and empowerment.

"good to be working with the bureau," candless said. "we have the couple still here. larry henderson and maria mcdane. they're both late 20s, working professionals, walking their dog in the morning before work, witnessed most or all of the samuels abduction."

it was a little after 11 am. reid calculated that meant that the couple had been sitting at the precinct for several hours now and was probably long past ready to leave, making it more likely they'd be candid with him and jj.

reid always liked these moments before the investigation truly began. it gave him a sense of peace and a sense of drive - to help, to rescue, to heal, to unearth the truth at all costs. he felt like it was his true purpose in life.


	2. part II: into the sea

**content warning: **_visceral depictions of violence**. **i do not own any of the criminal minds characters, concepts, or storylines, and make no profit from this writing._

* * *

**part II: into the sea**

* * *

_6:52 AM, portland, april 14_

it was a quiet morning on the western promenade. portland, maine, was a peninsula, and at each end it had an aptly-named promenade. the eastern promenade overlooked the ocean, came directly up to the ocean. the western promenade also overlooked the ocean, but the western prom was much further away. you could still catch the scent of the sea on the breeze, but instead of being able to dip your toes into the water, there was ocean further outseparated from the prom by views of the western side of town. the western prom also overlooked a bean factory, which hannah samuels always got a chuckle at when she ran by. she imagined the ocean farting from all the bean sludge poured into the water.

hannah samuels had woken up around 6 AM, ready to go on a run before her 9 AM class. she had tucked her dark hair back into a braid, pulling pieces off her neck to create a shrinking length of twine down her back. it was a morning like almost every morning: hannah loved running, had loved running for almost ten years, found it helped her keep her mind clear and her heart engaged with life.

she went running 5 or 6 days a week, sometimes 7, usually in the early morning hours. her apartment in the west end was only a few blocks from the western prom and she found it a beautiful place to start her day. and, most importantly, she felt safe there. less than a handful of times had she bumped into a more nefarious type of character, but it was usually just some man passing in the relative darkness of early morning that gave her the creeps. not anyone she felt would harm her.

this morning, 45 minutes into her run, hannah was jogging at a good clip, zipping along the prom's curvacious edge on the sidewalk. she occasionally glanced out at the overlook, taking in the views of town and the ocean and breathing in the crisp, pretty air. as she rounded the corner near where the western prom ended and abutted one of the major hospitals in town, hannah heard rustling somewhere around her. she figured it was an animal and didn't stop to look around. as she continued, so did the rustling.

suddenly, everything changed.

there was a man wearing dark clothes standing in front of hannah, about ten or twelve feet away, wearing a ski mask, having apparently come out of some bushes along the side of the path. he was standing directly in her way. hannah felt her heart beating faster, her fight vs. flight instincts starting to come out of slumber, just in case. she started to veer around the man, figuring perhaps he was wearing a ski mask due to the relative cold of the morning, but he stepped to the side to block her egress.

oh god oh god oh god. hannah started to panic. oh god oh god oh god...the man was only five feet from her and he was closing in. she started running as fast as she could. she didn't know what to do. suddenly, the man's arms reached out and reeled her into him. "_don't fight,_ _or i'll kill you,_" he whispered, high-pitched, snake-like, in her ear. he showed her the briefest glint of what appeared to be a knife in his hands. she started to flail anyway, trying to bite the man, trying to do anything to get away. "no!" she shouted. "no! help!"

hannah kicked the man repeatedly, but he did not release his grip on her. "you're coming with me," he said. "you're coming with me and you don't have a choice." hannah could not accept this. she finally landed a solid bite on his shoulder and he released his grasp just barely, enough for hannah to tumble forward onto the ground. she tried to get up, and as she looked ahead of her, she saw a couple far away with what appeared to be a dog stopped in the middle of the pathway, gawking.

"help!" she cried. by now, the terrible man had peeled her off the ground and was dragged her, kicking and screaming, to a car parked about 50 feet from the pathway. it was a gold sedan with four doors, she noticed. the man from the couple was making a run for the car, but the terrible man was too quick: the keys were already in the ignition and he started the car and locked the doors in one fell motion. and then, suddenly, hannah felt the quickest moment of pain in her head and then everything went black... everything went black.

* * *

"let me ask you this," reid was saying, "about how tall was the man?"

maria mcdane looked uncomfortably at her boyfriend, larry. "um...maybe 6 feet?" she hazarded.

maria was a small woman, thin - spindly, almost. her hair grew out from her head in big ringlets, reminded reid of the legs of a spider in a way. he thought spiders were particularly beautiful, given the thousands of types and their hardy, secretive, utilitarian nature.

larry said, "it was hard to see - it was still a little dark. but i could tell he was in all black and had a ski mask or something on his face. he appeared to be a white male. and he had the gold sedan. the license plate ended with two letters, maybe 'TZ.'"

"statistically," reid said, "most assailants of this type are white men." reid glanced at larry, having heard he and maria's recounting of what they had seen several ways through by now. larry and maria both seemed sweet and completely overwhelmed and unnerved by what they had seen that morning. larry was tall, probably 6'3", and had red hair that stood up off of his head in a kerfluffled but somehow still stylish manner. reid thought he was the more attractive of the two, though neither he nor maria were unattractive at all. spencer started to think about larry - wondered what he was like outside of an interrogation room, wondered what his laugh sounded like - but pushed aside the thoughts to focus on the interview.

"did you notice anything else about the unsub?" jj asked. "anything that could help us pin him down. you guys are the only material witnesses we have in this case."

thinking, maria offered: "he moved with a little bit of a limp in his left leg. at least, it seemed like it, anyway. we were pretty far away."

"we were too far away that i could get to her in time," larry said plainly. there was a desperation behind his blue eyes that spencer recognized from all the times he had tried to save someone and had failed. pain mixed with confusion and inadequacy and fear. quite the cocktail.

"you couldn't have stopped this from happening," reid said. "even in perfect circumstances, it sounds like this unsub had this planned out perfectly, and it would have been highly unlikely that you'd have been able to stop him."

"then why did he do this in front of us?" maria asked.

"i think you guys were a snag in his plan - he's an organized unsub, but he's getting more desperate and frenzied as he picks up the pace in his killing," reid said.

a horrified look crossed maria's face.

jj cleared her throat, touched her blonde ponytail, pushed some whisps of hair back from her face. "what i think reid is saying is that you guys were in the wrong place at the wrong time. it could have happened to anyone."

"it happened to that girl," maria said. she looked as though she were about to cry, her eyebrows furrowed, her eyes watering around the edges. "she was definitely in the wrong place. no one deserves what happened to her, even the worst person who has ever lived."

* * *

_peaks island, three miles off the coast of portland_

in the dark basement, after hours of yelling for help and coming in and out of consciousness, hannah heard a door open after the sound of many locks opening. _oh god, _she thought. _he's here. _

"hello, my sweet," a voice greeted her. "it's time to begin your lesson..." he said, wrapped inside the darkness.

suddenly he was next to the bed, still wearing the mask.

"what do you want with me?" hannah screamed.

"no one can hear you down here, you know," the terrible man said. "i've soundproofed all the walls so this is an impenetrable chamber...perfect for a little wretch like you."

"i'm not a wretch!" hannah screamed. "please, let me go. please...i have a sister and a mom who love me... i won't tell anyone."

"of course you'll tell _everyone,_" the man said. "i'm not as foolish as you are. i'm not foolish enough to get captured. this is my life's work," he said.

hannah began screaming at the top of her lungs. no words, just guttural, guttural noises. sounds like a rabbit makes before death. and then she saw the man's hands, gloved in black, coming for her throat...

* * *

after the man had choked hannah into unconsciousness but not death, he sat back and looked at her beautiful little body on the bed. "boy, she's a pretty one, daniel," he said outloud. there was a moment where one had to let go of the target's throat, right after when the eyes start to bug out, in order to prevent death but ensure unconsciousness. he loved looking at the marks his hands left on the necks of his targets after he'd choked them into unconsciousness. he still needed more time with this one, though. not much more time, but still some time. he didn't know her name and didn't care to.

what he cared about was delivering his message to the world. this, killing, was his life's work.

and the next messages were part of the key that would turn the whole world's eyes to him. he was a master. the master. and it was time for the world to see his art.


	3. part III: needlessly

**author's note: **i do not own any of the _criminal minds _concepts, characters, or storylines. all rights belong to CBS. i make no profit from this work whatsoever. this is a work informed by the US copyright fair use. rated MA for mature - **content warning** for murder, depictions of death, and violent images.

* * *

**part III: mercilessly**

* * *

casco bay that surrounds portland is beautiful. unmistakably glorious sunsets, pinks, blues, purples, reflecting off the blueish-green waves. portland's waterfront is both an integral part of its landscape and an integral part of its livelihood.

it was here that hannah samuels was found, floating facedown, at 4 PM on april 14. just thirty feet out from the pier. like someone had just plopped her there from the sky.

* * *

reid had just begun to dive into some geographical profiling, finally sitting down and intending to stay still without interrogating someone else for the first time all day. he had interviewed the couple for hours and then joined morgan and blake at one of the abduction sites. he needed to clear his brain and looking at maps did just that for him. gave him something to focus intensely and intently on, plus the braiding-in of all the green land and blue rivers and highway roads was rather supraorbital to behold for him. it put his brain into a meditative state, an altered state, he thought. peaceful. rivers are rarely angry.

morgan was nearby, though, standing over the table, looking down at pictures of the victims, gillian and william. a photo of hannah was there too. "i don't get it," he said outloud. "i can't make the connection between the victims. garcia has cross-checked all their records three times and there is no connection. no common friends, one lived outside of portland but worked in town, one lived in portland...no jobs in common, no coworkers who knew each other, no parking tickets in the same vicinity, no kids that play together... they don't seem to know each other at all."

"might i suggest," reid said, looking up from his map of the greater portland metropolitan area, "that that is because the victims have no connection to each other? it seems to me that our unsub, who is ruthless yet skilled, could be arbitrarily picking victims to achieve some sort of endgame. to use them to deliver his message. the personal message avenger type. the connection, in essence, is actually in their lack of connection."

"yesss," morgan said, crossing his muscular arms. "you're onto something, kid. our unsub looks at his victims like they are merely pawns to be disgarded in this big game he is playing. the _who_ doesn't matter so much as the how? and why?"

"yup," reid said, pursing his lips.

just then, morgan's cell phone start to twitch on the table in front of him. it said "HOTCH," so of course he answered.

"what's up, hotch?" morgan said into the phone.

reid watched as morgan's face turned from inquisitive and determined to crestfallen. he spoke with hotch for a minute more: "when? where?" and listened to the answers. "we'll be there ASAP," he said.

"what happened?" reid asked.

"hannah samuels," morgan said.

"oh, no," reid said. he felt that feeling rising to his throat, a dash of failure and shame mixed with something like he imagined a broken heart to be, heavy with sadness for the state of the world, for needless loss, for the pain of all the loved ones, heavy with weight of the extinguishment of life. the needless, absolutely needless, extinguishment of life.

* * *

at the scene, after hannah had been pulled from the water, the message in her throat read: _The master in the art of living makes no distinction between his work and his play. _like the others, it was typed in a basic black all-caps font. like the others, it was inside a ziplock bag in hannah's throat. unlike the others, the message was more than one word. it was as if the Master had been naming himself with the first two victims, then speaking his opening line through hannah. he was clearly in command. the BAU felt many steps behind.

and hannah, like the others, was gone now.


	4. part IV: peaks and valleys

**author's note: **none of the _criminal minds _characters, concepts, or storylines belong to me. they belong solely to CBS. i make no profit from this writing. rated MA for mature. **content warning: **mentions of murder.

* * *

**IV: peaks and valleys**

* * *

peaks island, three miles off the coast of portland, is a tiny five-mile-wide island with an old-timey, but modern, feel. corner shop ice-cream store, little grocery store, an umbrella cover museum, dirt roads leading to beaches full of beach roses; golf carts transporting tourists and families, bicyclists pausing atop cliffs to observe the miracles of the sea in front of them, the seagulls and the ducks and seals; vehicles that hadn't lain tire in the actual city part of portland in 30 years, backyard docks; people sitting on beaches gazing, lost in thought, out over crunched seashells and white boats anchored to the sea's crust; a wrought-iron, red-carpet hotel; catholic churches with tile visions of the virgin mary, old haunted forts covered in graffiti to explore.

everybody knows everybody's business, everyone's kids play together. everybody's dogs get along, generally, though they don't always get along with the island's chickens. the city council struggles to maintain enough members for a quorum, but there is a political and artistic, family-oriented community buried in the sands and trees and seashells of peaks island.

in the secrets of peaks island, though, there was something different.

peaks island was where the daniel made his home. in his public image, he was daniel cozi, a sandy-haired middle-aged man, no wife, no kids, living the good life on the island. he ran a small art gallery out of the front room of his elegant two-storey blue townhouse, a few streets back from the waterfront. he lived there and worked there alone. in his spare time, he was making his life's work, his greatest artistic achievement: art made from the human body, the purest and most putrid canvas at once.

he owned a small yellow boat, just a plain thing, a little house on top where he used the controls and sat, overlooking the water. a lower deck with enough space for a bunk and a galley bathroom. his bed on the boat had a red flag of flannel blanket on it. it was the only color besides the splintery wood paneling on the lower deck. on the surface, he was just like everyone else: a package of strange, dissimilar details that somehow created whole beings. vibrant beings.

in the afternoon, daniel sat at the counter at one of the local cafes. he was eating a delicious chicken salad sandwich before heading home. it was getting close to closing time, around 6pm. this cafe was the only one that stayed open even that late. the tiny, eight-aisle grocery store stayed open until 9. a few of the bars stayed open until 11 most nights, sometimes 1'o'clock in the morning if it was to be an especially rowdy summer night.

"hey dan," one of the other regulars, a magazine writer named ursula, said, as she entered the shop. ursula had a purple streak running through her hair.

"hey ursula," daniel said. "man, do i still love your name, every time." he cracked a smile, knowing his slightly-sideways grin was one of his most charming attributes.

ursula was in her 30s. she and daniel had a casual, mildly-flirtatious relationship. just acquaintances, but they always chatted for a few minutes when their paths crossed.

"how are things, dan?" ursula asked.

"things are going well at the gallery," he said. "we're opening a new show next week."

"the henry gabler collection, right?" ursula said. "i read that in the newspaper."

"yes, the gabler. we're lucky to have his work."

"seems that way," she said. "you and your art, daniel. i always admire you and appreciate you for it. you bring such a vibrant art presence to this place." she smiled, too, gesturing out the window to the island beyond it. "this island is lucky to have you, daniel cozi," she said.

everyone was lucky daniel is on this earth, he thought. today daniel felt invincible. like he could do anything, anything at all.

* * *

"i wonder who his next victim is going to be, because there _is _going to be a next one," morgan said. they were still at the pier, morgan standing with his back to reid as he looked out over the bay.

"how is he getting them into the water?" reid said. "how, in broad daylight, does he get them into the water?"

"think about it: it must be someone who blends in here," jj said, standing behind reid and morgan, all looking out over the ocean, as if to try to draw from it its secret.

"a boat owner, a ferry passenger, an employee of one of the businesses along the waterfront..." morgan said, now facing reid and jj.

"i'd think that boat owner would be almost a given," reid said. "he has to have some way of dumping the bodies in the bay where he can go unnoticed."

"let's get garcia to do a rundown on all the boat owners who dock in this and any other nearby marinas," morgan said. he dialed garcia on his cellphone.

"why, helloooo, my handsome knight in shining armor," garcia said, back at quantico, surrounded by her screens. "speak."

"can you get us a list of all the boat owners, commercial and individual, in and around casco bay?" morgan asked

"oh, give me something harder than that, for heaven's sake," garcia said. "i'll call you right back."

"thanks, baby girl," he said. "you are the best." he hung up the phone.

"so, what do you think of the multiple sets of bruising around the neck?" jj asked. "that's new."

"i think it means that he's trying to tell us something new. he hadn't strangled gillian or william more than once, right, hotch? perhaps it's a form of torture? a cry for help?" morgan said.

"i think he would be trying to communicate something," hotch said. "our unsub has made it clear he likes messages. i mean, why go to the trouble of putting the notes into ziplock bags? why not just send a letter to the police precinct or a newspaper, go more high-profile? and you're right, morgan - neither gillian nor william had more than one set of bruising around their necks and no other ligature marks of any kind. hyoid bone was broken in both gillian and william's necks."

"i see an element of this being about control," rossi added. "he has made up this complex ritual surrounding death involving cryptic messages in a specific order. that speaks of an organized killer to me."

reid was silent for a moment, wearing his thinking face, biting his lip and repeatedly raising his eyes to the ceiling and back. his coworkers often marvelled at how efficiently and creatively his brain processed and made connections.

"he mentions art in the message, and seems to refer to himself as 'the Master,'" reid said. "i wonder if what he's trying to tell us is that, for him, killing is his artform and this is his _piece de resistance_. what if he's an artist or affiliated with the art community? think about it. what did he say? _the master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play. _i think that is a james michener quote, from _the source. _it goes...

_"'The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.'_

"logically, if this is the Master's opening line, he's telling us, _in order for me to feel truly alive, my work and play are one. this is my art. _and i think the only thing that _art _could mean in this case is killing. and he's leaving us to decide whether he is working or playing, but all that we need to know is that he feels he has mastered his art. he is absolutely convinced this is his life's work and play."

"it's neither," blake said, recoiling as she thought about the Master's mindset. "it's killing. killing is killing. there isn't anything beautiful or artful or poetic about it. makes me want to kick the bastard in the shins, really."

* * *

a few minutes later, garcia was back on the line. "what can i do for you now, my sweets?" she said. "i've got your list, and boy, it's a big one."

"garcia, can you cross-reference boat owners with anyone affiliated with the artist community? artists, gallery owners, art patrons, you get it," morgan said.

"can do." and garcia went to her screens.

reid felt excited for the first time since 9am that morning - this felt like they were maybe, finally, on to something. around him, the team was buzzing - perhaps there could be justice for hannah. for william. for gillian.


End file.
